Tan Wenjie

Dr. Tan graduated from Peking University Health Science Center with an MD in 1989 and continued his training in immunology and virology (picoviruses and hepatitis viruses) at the Institute of Virology in the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine (CAPM). He received his Ph.D. from CAPM in 1998. From 1998 to 2004, he conducted research in the fields of virology and gene therapy in the United States, where he worked at the University of Southern California and UCLA.

Dr. Tan joined the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention (NIVDCP) in 2005 as a principal investigator. In 2008, he was appointed Professor and Chief of the Biotech Center for Viral Disease Emergency at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC). His major research focuses on the detection, surveillance, and development of countermeasures against emerging viral diseases (such as mpox and COVID-19).

He is a National Health Commission Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Expert, an advisory expert on WHO Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research, and the chief scientist of a national key R&D project. He serves as the deputy director of both the Biotechnology Division of the Chinese Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Nucleic Acid Vaccine Branch and the Detection Technology Branch of the Chinese Vaccine Association, and the deputy editor-in-chief of the Chinese Journal of Virology.

He has published over 300 papers domestically and internationally as a corresponding author or co-author, including in NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, Cell, etc. (with over 90,000 citations on Google Scholar). He holds more than 10 granted patents.

He has received the Second Prize of the National Scientific and Technological Progress Award (1997) and the Second National Innovation and Excellence Award (2020). Additionally, he led the team to win the First Prize of the Beijing Science and Technology Progress Award in 2021, the Third Prize of the Chinese Medical Science and Technology Award, the Second Prize of the Chinese Preventive Medicine Science and Technology Award, and the Third Prize of the Huaxia Medical Science and Technology Award.

In 2021, he was honored as an “Advanced Individual in the National Science and Technology System’s Fight Against the COVID-19 Pandemic.” For many consecutive years, he has been listed in the Clarivate and Elsevier global “Highly Cited Scientists” rankings.